Bücher der Reihe Max Planck Studies in Anthropology and Economy

These six ethnographies offer a different vision. Comparative, historical, and contemporary, the studies stretch from Macedonia to Kyrgyzstan, each one illuminating the changes in an area as it emerged from socialism and (re-)entered market society.

Beginning with an original historical vision of financialization in human history, this volume then continues with a rich set of contemporary ethnographic case studies from Europe, Asia and Africa. Authors explore how finance influences social and economic structures in different environments.

Self-sufficiency of the house is practiced in many parts of the world but ignored in economic theory, just as socialist collectivization is assumed to have brought household self-sufficiency to an end. The ideals of self-sufficiency, however, continue to shape economic activity in many post-socialist areas.

Based on ethnographic research conducted during several years, Market Frictions examines the tensions and frictions that emerge from the interaction of global market forces, urban planning policies, and small-scale trading activities in the Vietnamese border city of Lao Cai.

The idea of a moral economy has been explored and assessed in numerous disciplines. The anthropological studies in this volume provide a new perspective to this idea by showing how the relations of workers, employees and employers, and of firms, families and households are interwoven with local notions of moralities.

This volume links investigations of work to questions of personal and professional identity and social relations. The authors uncover complex entanglements between the drudgery and exploitation experienced by most people in the course of making a living and ideals of emancipated personhood.

Common sense suggests that rituals drain economic wealth & that rational actions are antithetical to rituals. These 6 studies offer a different vision. Comparative, historical, & contemporary, the studies stretch from Macedonia to Kyrgyzstan, each one illuminating the changes in an area as it emerged from socialism & (re-)entered market society.

Bringing together ethnographic case studies of industrial labor from different parts of the world, Industrial Labor on the Margins of Capitalism explores the increasing casualization of workforces and the weakening power of organized labor. This division owes much to state policies and is reflected in local understandings of class. By exploring this relationship, these essays question the claim that neoliberal ideology has become the new ''commonsense'' of our times and suggest various propositions about the conditions that create employment regimes based on flexible labor.

Through a wide range of ethnographic contexts this book explores how practices and moralities of thrift are intertwined with austerity, debt, welfare, and patronage across various social and temporal scales and are constantly re-negotiated at the nexus of socio-economic, religious, and kinship ideals and praxis.

When Things Become Property examines postsocialist land and forest reforms in Albania, Romania and Vietnam, finding that property reforms are not miracle tools available to governments for refashioning economies, politics or environments.

Based on ethnographic work in a Moldovan winemaking village, Wine Is Our Bread shows how workers in a prestigious winery have experienced the country's recent entry into the globalized wine market and how their productive activities at home and in the winery contribute to the value of commercial terroir wines. Drawing on theories of globalization, economic anthropology and political economy, the book contributes to understanding how crises and inequalities in capitalism lead to the 'creative destruction' of local products, their accelerated standardization and the increased exploitation of labour.

The idea of a moral economy has been explored and assessed in numerous disciplines. The anthropological studies in this volume provide a new perspective to this idea by showing how the relations of workers, employees and employers, and of firms, families and households are interwoven with local notions of moralities. From concepts of individual autonomy, kinship obligations, to ways of expressing mutuality or creativity, moral values exert an unrealized influence, and these often produce more consent than resistance or outrage.